A Frustrating Discovery

In Which I Discover that all this time the DLC add-ons I thought I was adding to my games on the Xbox One were not actually added to the games!?

The world of games and gaming is supposed to be an orderly one in which the tech that makes up the primary vehicle for gaming is reliable and trustworthy and functions like clockwork.  When you purchase a DLC expansion pack or item, or you grab a free one, you expect that after it downloads it WILL be added to your game, and you WILL be in a position – at the appropriate time – to take advantage of and use that new content or item, right?  Right!  No, WRONG!

Well, it should be Right – but it turns out at least in the case of the Xbox One to be all wrong.  And very frustrating.

I first became aware of this due in no small part to another potential disaster that I am in the process of correcting – that being the sudden realization that I was out of storage space on my Xbox One.

What happened was the game I was playing suddenly started acting all strange – with stuttering video.  It got worse when I tried to apply a new accessory pack and it went V-E-R-Y freaking S-L-O-W.

A brief check revealed that my Internal Storage was down to less than 10 percent free.  So I tried to move some games over to my very spiffy and totally reliable external storage — a 2TB Western Digital My Book USB 3.0 external storage device.  Which I discovered I could not do because it was down to less than 5% free space!?

How did this happen without me being aware of it??  Why did the Xbox One not WARN me that I was running out of room??  Will little Stevie be rescued from the bottom of the well in time??

Okay well as for Stevie, it’s a coin toss.  And I never liked that kid anyway.  But as for the rest, well, the reason the Xbox One failed to warn me is mostly because the wizards at Xbox and Microsoft never thought to add that sort of alarm to the system.  I sent them an email suggesting that they do so – because hey mates, I got your back!

Had Ta Get Some New Sto-Sto!

Understanding that my position was precarious – and that I would not be able to continue playing games, let alone working on any of my writing projects (which at the moment means working on the Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 Walkthrough and Guide for NeoSeeker – which is a game I am very excited about guiding) – I understood instinctively that it was time to get more storage.

That meant deciding on HOW to do that.  I had several options – though replacing the Internal drive was not one of them as this is an Xbox One, not a PS4.  Fortunately just as I was sinking into deep and dark depression fate stepped in and graced me with her presence in the form of the code for the game that was provided by my editor being for the PlayStation 4 edition of the game and NOT the Xbox One edition.  Catastrophe averted!

But I still needed to get more storage on my Xbox One, and here were my choices:

(1) Buy a new drive and add it to my Xbox.
(2) Buy a larger drive and replace the 2TB My Book with that.

In their wisdom the blokes at Xbox opted to add support for TWO external storage devices for the Xbox One, which by the way has a total of three (3) USB 3.0 Slots on it.

Logically that is a good thing because it means that, say for example I wanted to upgrade to a larger storage device, I could attach it to my Xbox and then transfer all of the content to it that had filled up my orginal drive, no worries.  So that seemed like the way to go – and then in the future depending on the cost per TB of storage hardware I may do the same thing or, based on my experience this past week, just add a second larger drive (more on that later) instead.

So I decided to go with replacing the WDMB with a larger unit.  Initially I thought to go with a larger Western Digital My Book – say a 4TB model.  But when I went pricing the drives I discovered that I could get a nearly identical external storage device from Seagate (it too is a 7200 RPM USB 3.0 AC-powered unit) but, if I opted for the Seagate model I could get a whopping six (6) TB for the same price as a 4TB My Book!

Naturally I went with the Seagate 6TB model.

When my honey brought the new drive home – along with a 1500VA / 900W UPS for my main system whose RAID Array does NOT like being suddenly without power at all – I was very happy as I installed it and began transferring the contents of the My Book to it.

There Was Trouble…

But that is when I ran into trouble.  Not storage trouble mind you, but the trouble that has prompted me to write this post.  See as I was moving the contents of the old drive to the new I discovered something that both shocked and disturbed me.

If you are a gamer you know that the modern games environment is a very different one from what we used to have.  Today you need lots of storage because while the games consoles still use the original media for a game to verify you own the license and should be able to play it (that’s for RBE games – digital titles come with a digital license that is saved on your console), they also tend to have lots of DLC-based expansion content, be that new maps, missions, story content, weapons, or kit.

Okay that’s not a problem – so far.  But during the process of moving the data files and games from one device to the other, I accidentally discovered something I was previously ignorant of.  For a LOT of the games I owned, not ALL of the DLC and expansion content had actually been installed!

Understand this – the content – the DLC packs – had been DOWNLOADED.  They just had not been INSTALLED!?

For games like Just Cause 3 or Hitman if that happened it would be obvious – because the content would not be present in the game.  No, for those titles the DLC was faithfully downloaded, installed, and properly licensed for my games.  I noticed nothing wrong.

But in the process of moving the games I had to perform the following specific steps:

• Open the Settings Option from the Xbox One Main Menu;
• Select All Settings from that menu;
• Select System and then Storage from the Settings Menu;
• Select the device to move the games FROM (Internal or My Book);
• Select View Content for that device;
• Move the cursor to the desired game I needed to move and select Manage Game;
• Select Move All for that game then select the Destination (my new device);
• Confirm that I want to Move All.

Sounds simple enough, right?  Yeah, but here is the thing – in the process of doing this I accidentally moved the cursor to the Ready to Install option on the side menu, and there, where it should NOT have been, was the following in that selection for the game Gears of War 4:

• Brothers to the End and Vintage Del Gear Packs
• Crimson Omen LE Controller Content Pack
• Map: Blood Drive
• Map: Checkout
• Map: Clocktower
• Map: Diner
• Map: Drydock
• Map: Glory
• Map: Hotel
• Map: Impact Dark
• Map: Old Town
• Map: Slab
• Map: Speyer
• Map: War Machine

Are you freaking kidding me!!??!

When I had originally obtained all of that DLC I SAW it download and I just ASSUMED it was installed into the game.  Big Mistake.  BIG MISTAKE!

NONE of it had been installed.  I just never noticed.  And when I checked I found that in one of every four or so games this was ALSO the case.  Expansion content and DLC I had bought and downloaded had simply NOT been installed by the system.  What the hell?!

So as I moved the games and any content that HAD installed over to the new device, I then had to INSTALL the stuff that had been downloaded but never actually installed.

I was pissed.  Very angry.  I seriously considered writing an email to President Trump to warn him about this because I knew that HE would be pissed.  After all he owns and plays an Xbox One – can you imagine how much uninstalled DLC that HE must have?!  In my fantasy head I could see agents from the DEA and ATF and FBI and IRS and ABC and LOTS of other three-letter acronyms kicking down doors at the Redmond Campus, and not even bothering with taking names.

They’d be like – “Bill of Rights?! We don’t need no steeenking Bill of Rights!  Who is the idiot that allowed this threat to national gaming security to take place?!  Tell us now or we will line you all up and start shooting you, one-by-one, until you do!  Because Trump!  Because ‘Merica!  Hell yeah!”

That could happen though, so I deleted the email.  Sigh.

Opinions sometimes have that effect…

How The Heck?

I have no idea how this happened.  I have no idea how I failed to notice this.  I have no idea how to fix it other than to go through every title on my Xbox and check to see if there is content that failed to be installed.

It’s not like I can just look at the “Ready to Install” selection and know because it FAILS TO LIST THEM.  That’s right – there is NO number next to that selection in the menu to tell you how many or even IF there is content Ready to Install – and unlike the regular patches that appear in the Main Menu section appropriately titled “Updates” which DOES list the number of Patches that are Ready to Install, but on the Settings/Storage Menu not so much.  It just does not.

So here I am, with all my games finally installed on the new Seagate external storage unit, checking the games one-by-one to see.

This, mates, is a cautionary tale.  It is my suggestion to you that you just might want to start checking YOUR game library for content you downloaded but, for a mysterious reason, was never actually installed.  Because mates don’t let mates drink-drive, and they don’t let them have uninstalled content.  I’m just saying!